The Favor

 

 “Come on, Willow,” Jasmine says. I glance around the pawn shop. We’re standing in front of the smallest jewelry counter I’ve ever seen. Behind us is a wall of ancient ‘restored’ guns from the civil war, and we’re surrounded by overflowing shelves of random items. Books, ceramic figurines, antiques. There’s even an old tanning bed in the back of the store. Point is, the shopkeeper can’t see us.

“I don’t know, Jas…” She grabs my face and forces me to look into her big baby blues.

“Look, everyone does it. This place probably doesn’t even have security cameras. I mean, it’s not like we’re at Tiffany!”

“Still…” God, she is a terrible influence.

“You and I both know that earrings are the easiest.” Jasmine looks both ways, does a 360, and swipes up the earrings. She drops them into my purple tote bag. “See? No one will ever know the difference.” She smirks.

“Fine, but I’m blaming you if we get caught.” I look up at the ceiling. She’s right: no security cameras; just yellowed tiles that look just about ready to cave in.

Jasmine grabs my arm and says, “Come on, let’s ditch this joint before we start to look suspicious.” We start toward the door. I’m not so great at acting casual. When Jasmine pushes the door open a little bell at the top that I hadn’t noticed rings.

“Great,” she curses under her breath.

“Excuse me Miss?” the obese shop owner walks toward us, wearing a red t-shirt that reads ‘Ye Old Pawn Shoppe’ on the breast pocket. “Sorry, but we have to check all large bags here. You really don’t look like the type but you’d be surprised how many people think they can snatch things here and get away with it.” He gives me a tense smile, showing rotted teeth and making his greasy cheeks look even plumper.

As he takes my bag and starts pawing through it with his sausage fingers, Jas looks at me, eyes widened. My heart’s racing, and the shop owner’s, Paul according to his nametag, eyebrows slowly rise. He pulls out the gold, chandelier-style earrings and dangles them in front of my face.

“Hmm? What do we have here?” Paul gives me a knowing look.

“Um…those are mine,” I stammer, trying to cover for myself.

“Oh. Are they now? Well, that just clears everything up,” he says sarcastically, mocking me. “I guess you’re free to go.” Jasmine glances at me and shrugs. We turn to leave.

Paul chortles. “Hold it,” he throws out an arm, stopping us. It’s not that we can’t push past his arm, it was more because of the fact that we don’t want to touch him. “See the funny thing is, we have the exact same earrings here. What a coincidence? I think not. Why don’t we take a gander at the jewelry counter ladies?” He leads us to the counter.

Paul looks into the glass case and turns back to face us. I brace myself for him to tell me he’s going to call the cops or something.

“Look, girls, I’ll give you one more chance. If you come clean now, I won’t call the cops or anything of the sort.” Jasmine and I exchange nervous glances. She nods her head ever so slightly.

“Alright, alright, I did it. I took the earrings. Are you happy now? Can we leave this dump?” I might as well make him feel bad about himself.

“Your free to go, if…,” great, the dreaded if, “ you do me a favor.”

Jasmine can’t hold back any longer. “Who do you think you are ‘Paul’? We don’t even know you and you’re asking us for a freaking favor?” Her face reddens with her angry outburst.